Imperialism is a necessary component of the improvement of the human condition. Regional economic systems will not get off the ground to the point of allowing expansion into even such simplistic concepts as compound metals (which require trade products from widely dispersed areas) with out the concept of imperialism to allow expansion of control and security. Without imperialism, we would still be at the economics development stage of tribal groups.

Properly speaking building an empire is the role of Rulership, in a natural progression of expanding the security of your boundaries. The further away you can push enemy threats, the safer and more secure your homeland becomes, and the more profitable that security makes it. The concept of rulership automatically implies the concept of empire, in that few rulers can ever have enough security. (Although there may be exceptions, particularly islands like feudal Japan, the rule is that there will always be another threat that involves expanding the boundaries just a little bit further.) This is the foundation of traditional empire, particularly continuous land frontier empires. All of the ancient empires fall into this pattern, as do the Medieval Mongol and Turkish empires, and those of Czarist Russia, the continental United States, and Nazi Germany.

Nicola Machiavelli distinguishes six types of government three positive – monarchical, aristocratic and democratic, and three degraded versions tyranny, oligarchy and licentiousness. Perhaps we can suggest that the three basic types of imperialism - security, assistance (‘white man’s burden’), and trade, each has a negative alternative vainglory, robber-barony and competitive.

Security Empire involves making the borders safe (pushing back the barbarian raiders model), whereas Vainglory Empire involves being dragged into places no sensible person wants to go, simply to ensure that your rival does not go there (Palestine in 1918). Trade Empire is self-explanatory (India and Singapore), whereas Competitive Empire involves thinking that power comes from simply possessing a trading Empire, and foolishly expanding into areas where the cost is greater than the gains (Central Africa, New Guinea). Assistance Empire involves us in that most slippery of concepts “for the good of the people”. Assistance Empire might be exampled by Britain’s seizing power in parts of India to stamp out activities like Thuggee or in the Gulf to stop piracy or slavery; or the invasion of Nazi Germany or Hussein’s Iraq. (Some religious movements also want to bring ‘the light’ to people… Christians and Muslims?) Robber-barony would be example by the conquest of the Aztecs and Inca’s, whose entire motivation was ruthless extortion. (Some Christian or Muslim conquest might also fit into this?)

The great Middle Eastern and Asian land-based empires can be broken into two types, expansion of security (which often includes trade), and straight out conquest (which is usually a variation on robber baron, where they want to control more trade nodes and tax more peasants). Maritime-based empires, not having continuous borders, are usually more complex.

The first Trade Empire was that of the Phoenicians. They spread their civilisation around the edges of the Mediterranean, not principally in search of conquest, but rather in search of trade opportunities. The fact that their settlements were developed into local hegemonic powers such as Carthage is simply a reflection of the necessity of securing the borders of your new trading states. As such the empire of Carthage was ill suited to competition with the Roman robber baron empire that arose to compete. Rome was less interested in free trade, and more interested in subduing all possible competition, and controlling more peasant farmers to tax. Rome’s expansion into Spain, Bengal, North Africa, and around the rest of the Mediterranean certainly had trade components, but was fundamentally pursued for the glory of conquest of Roman senators, the enrichment of the Roman state, and the reward of the Roman soldiers (and more taxes). Power in ancient Rome came from glory and conquest, and was maintained by making generous gifts to soldiers and supporters who backed up that power (ie. The need for more taxes).

What we think of as the modern age of European imperialism started as trade empires. European states, particularly Spain and Portugal, were seeking an alternative way around the trade hegemony of the Muslim Middle East. Their first efforts into the West African coast, and even into Asia, were exactly the sort of trading missions that established or conquered regional bases, which are similar to the Phoenicians and Carthage. (Most of the places they traded with had fairly stable governments of their own which – parts of India and Asia, or were too strong to immediately coerce – China and Japan.) By contrast, their arrival in the Americas had the unfortunate circumstantial of discovering unstable gold and silver rich civilisations. The concept of establishing trading basis for their own sake was immediately abandoned for the preference to conquer new lands to extort wealth from. Initially this was simply a matter of capturing large amounts of processed specie from the existing states, but quickly that moved on to enslaving populations to work in the mines to keep produce coming, and taxing new peasants. This shifted the mindset of a trading nation in to the concept of wringing wealth from the land, so vast estates sprang up, and new industries were put into production to produce commodities that would be of high value in Europe. Entire populations were transported from Africa to the Americas and the Caribbean islands to push through this concept of wringing wealth from the land. The Spanish in particular created an empire of robber barons. This approach leads to inevitable disaster. Centralisation of power; devolution of interest (loss of asibaya or common interest); eventually cost of control exceeding available profit; rebellions and revolutions; bankruptcy of motherland, etc.

By contrast the Dutch and English, being proper maritime nations rather than land powers with naval pretensions, were serious traders. (The Portuguese belonged with the maritime set, not with the naval powers like Spain, France, Russia and later Germany, but they too got sidetracked in South America.) They had to established fortified basis, and they too were more than willing to expand their regional control to secure those bases and make trade more profitable, but they are rarely lost sight of the idea that trade was valuable for its own purposes. Most of the civilisations that they encountered were left largely intact and allowed to continue. (Though the effects of disease in the Americas may have made it harder to have kept such civilisations going even had the Spanish and Portuguese been so inclined. This may have helped undermine Portuguese maritime logic.) The British and Dutch settled down to make as much money as possible working through the local princes and trading structures, rather than destroying the entire system and starting from scratch.

The empires that could be classed as trade empires include not just the Phoenician’s, and that of Venice, but also the Vikings, the Dutch, British, and at least partly the French. The empires that could be considered robber baron empires include not just the Romans and the Spanish, but also the Italians, Belgians, and Germans. It is notable that the Italians and Germans in particular got in to Competitive Empire because they believed that Trade Empire had made Britain great, but the sad odds and sods of the world left for particularly the Germans to conquer were not great trading areas, so they were reduced to robber baron techniques regardless of whether that would have been their preference anyway. (It would appear it was their preference, because investment, to encourage development, to encourage trade, was markedly lagging in their imperial possessions.)

This brings up the concept of suitability to running a trade empire. Successful trade empires such as the Dutch, British and American trade empires, were run by Protestant nation’s. Robber baron empires, such as the Spanish, Portuguese, Belgians and Italians, were run by Catholic states. (The Russian land empire was Orthodox, but also fitted closer to traditional central Asian empires than the new sea based western empires.) It would be too simplistic to argue cause and effect, but the correlation is remarkable. It may be telling that Germany, which is a half and half Catholic/Protestant nation, consciously tried a half and half solution of trade/robbery.

The interesting comparison is with the Asian state that most successfully adapted European techniques. The Japanese also saw the advantage of a trade empire, but also developed their Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere more along the lines of a robber baron empire. This could be a reflection of Catholic model of central control (divine right of kings/emperors); or of subservience to the latest economic theories as put forward by German theorists; or simply of racism. Given that when Japan later adopted Anglo-sphere concepts of trade they were remarkably successful, it is possible that the answer is more to do with the problem of 19th-century and Germanic theory than with inherent in vices towards Catholic style rule in the Shinto system.

This is not to suggest that any of the named empires did not have forays into the alternative strategies. In fact every empire that I have named bounced between different attitudes at various times and in various areas. Certainly Britain finished up with responsibility for parts of Africa and the Middle East for which it had no trading interest, on the simple principle of Competitive Empire to keep the enemy’s distance. This does not necessarily mean that Britain treated those territories in the sense of traditional robber baron states, but it certainly showed that if you were going to manage a non-profitable area, it had to adopt elements of robber baron extortion to have funds to make anything possible. Interestingly, it was the failure of this sort of imperialism to satisfy the taxpayers at home that led to the abandonment of the entire British imperial system.

The United States also had a varied attitude. The conquest of Indian territory was traditional land Conquest imperialism with no real trade element involved. The repeated conquests of already settled Mexican territory in the south and California was more straightforward Robber-Baron conquest of new land and peasants to tax. The expansion into the elements of the Spanish empire in Cuba and the Philippines was as much Competitive Empire - pushing competition out of trading areas - as it was about conquering more valuable trading positions in pursuit of 19th-century ideals of greatness. Hawaii was a British style sample where the imperial state reluctantly followed its traders into a political dominance of a state that could have been perfectly capable of continuing as a profitable trading partner. Vainglory is the best description. America even finished up with its own trade concessions in China – Competitive - though they always denied that these were in any way similar to everybody else’s trade concessions, and tried to claim Assistance empire.

The history of robber baron empires is not good. Ibn Khaldun talks of asibaya failing over the course of time, leading to inevitable collapse. It is arguable that more robber baron empires have collapsed because internal organisation was not up to maintaining them, than because the outsiders who eventually moved in were actually technically or militarily superior. Trade-based empires do not seem to have the same problem. The two possible reasons for dismantling trade-based empire that is not under threat from outside: are either that it is no longer profitable, or that there is no longer any need to have imperial protection because the trade can securely go on with out. Both of these issues are related to the taxpayers are not seeing the relevance of keeping up expensive imperial power projection. In fact it seems likely that most trade-based empires could usually maintain a technological edge over their robber baron equivalents. Rome certainly had to throw enormous energies into copying the technologies of Carthage before it could overcome her, and even then it was Rome’s superior land power that guaranteed the final result not her superiority at maritime trade technology. This means that Rome was acting more like a traditional central Asian Imperial Conquest Empire than like the proper Maritime Trade Empires.

Kennedy’s interesting but ultimately unsatisfactory Rise and Fall of the Great Powers makes the assumption that all empires can be compared by their economic costs. Fair enough. Unfortunately he then compares the indisputable collapse of robber baron empires, with the often voluntary liquidation of trade empires once communications are secure, or even with the rational desire of taxpayers to abandon the irrational accretions of Competitive Empire ASAP.

In economics as in any other science, confusing different outcomes by assuming similar motivations should be a no-no. Or to put it in terms that even an economist might understand - let’s not compare apples with oranges.

Monday, September 6, 2010

I have just finished reviewing a book by Augustine Meaher IV, called The Road to Singapore: the Myth of British Betrayal. It is an excellent analysis of how Australian political, social, industrial, and military elites, spend the entire interwar period failing to prepare Australia for what was to come in the Second World War. Its fundamental premise is that nobody should get away with shortchanging their own defences for 20 years, and then claiming that a resulting crisis is somebody else’s fault.

Imperial defence, from as early as 1863, was founded on the idea that Britain would coordinate a central response to any threat, but that each Dominion and associated territory was responsible for their own local defences. Throughout the interwar period Australia, like all other Dominions, had been repeatedly told that Imperial defence required adequate local defences to hold off raids until relief could arrive. The defence strategy of the British Empire and Commonwealth was to hold the mobile military forces, such as the main fleets and expeditionary armies (both of which had been voluntarily reduced due to League of Nations and Washington Naval Treaty commitments), at central nodes from which there dispatched to any area under threat. This could take several months. At a minimum this would be six weeks, and as worldwide threats rose when the Second World War commenced, it was raised to six months. Australia never prepared adequate defences to withstand raids for even six weeks.

The screams of betrayal from the Australian Labor Party in 1942 were an extremely good cover for their own resistance to all military expenditure for the preceding 20 years. Disarmament, pacifism, and appeasement had been the catch cries of all ALP policy right through the 1930s. Realistically the Curtin government had the choice of coming clean on their betrayal of their own people, or of pretending it was possible to blame somebody else.

At the time of the Japanese attack on Malaya, the Philippines and Pearl Harbor, Britain and her Empire and Commonwealth were engaged in an unparalleled feat of worldwide power projection. Already facing the combined efforts of the entire German and Italian Navy’s, most of the German and Italian air forces, and all of the Italian army - with substantial part of the most modern and powerful elements of the Wehrmacht including crack paratrooper and armoured forces: Britain also had to prepare a large army to defend Turkey and the northern 'Persian' frontiers against a potential German attack if the Soviet Union failed. A further cost was in fighting through a vast quantity of supplies to keep the Soviet Union in the war. (A single months worth of the aircraft and tanks sent to Russia would have saved the entire eastern position.) Aside from those minor details, Britain had to deploy large enough naval, army, and air forces to deter a Japanese attempt to take advantage of such an opportunity. Nonetheless, the forces being lined up for the Far East was staggeringly impressive, if only they could arrive in time.

By April 1942 Britain would have deployed six divisions to Malay, supported by 16 squadrons of aircraft, nine battleships and three aircraft carriers. This was in response to the early 1941 analysis that what was needed was three divisions, 22 squadrons of aircraft, seven battleships and two aircraft carriers (more aircraft equals less troops). Unfortunately the Japanese struck too soon, and there were only 3 ½ divisions, 16 half strength squadrons, four battleships and one aircraft carrier in the eastern forces. (Most textbooks do not even mention that the main British Eastern Fleet was to assemble at Ceylon, and that capital units were already there when the ill-fated Force Z took the gamble of trying to interfere with Japanese invasion fleet’s while the main Japanese fleet was clearly occupied at Pearl Harbor.)

In fact by the time Singapore fell in late January 1942, the reinforcements that had arrived - the British 18th division, another Indian and Australian Brigade, and hundreds of more modern aircraft - would almost certainly have been enough to have made the position secure if they had been there at the start. (Japanese descriptions of the campaign repeatedly emphasise their shoestring logistics and how close they came to failure.)

The British were still conscious that they were fighting a world war. Even as Singapore surrendered, and the Japanese launched an attack into Burma, the Indian Army was sending twice as many troops to face a far more dangerous prospect of a German attack into Persia. Frankly, from the perspective of a world war, the loss of a minor peninsula and naval base was a small price to pay. (Again unnoticed by most history books, is that despite fighting one of the greatest combinations of power in the history of the world until that time, total British territorial losses in World War II amounted to the tiny Channel Isles, and Malaysia and Burma - Australia also lost New Guinea. Territorially, this amounted to a few percent of the territory and population of the Empire.)

The records of the Combined Chiefs of Staff outline what was actually happening. By June 30, 1942, Britain would have 15 divisions in India, Burma, Ceylon, rising to 22 by December; and 17 divisions in the Middle East, rising to 26 by December. This is of course apart from the dozen divisions in Australia, 45 in Britain itself, and eight in the other parts of Africa. Adding in the divisions in Canada and New Zealand, this means that the British Empire was deploying more than 100 divisions in 1942. (Note that the United States reached its maximum of only 88 divisions in 1945.)

The next most ignored the fact by most of these revisionist historians, is that despite everything else that was going on, Britain kept her promise to deploy the main fleet to the Far East within six months of conflict commencing. (Even though this meant temporarily shutting down most operations in the Mediterranean to several months. The side effect of this was Rommel’s last successful attack as far as el-Alamein.) When the Japanese launched another spoiling attack in April 1942, the British Eastern Fleet had already assembled 5 battleships, 3 aircraft carriers, 7 cruises, 16 destroyers, and 7 submarines. Additional forces already en route included another 2 battleships and another aircraft carrier plus additional lighter units. In response to the Japanese raid, a further 2 battleships and an aircraft carrier were ordered to the area, with another 2 battleships being suggested as further reinforcements. It is necessary to note here that the original force was already the largest Allied fleet anywhere in the world in 1942. Lifting it to 9 battleships and 5 aircraft carriers would have made it a bigger capital ship force than the entire surviving United States Navy, despite the requirements of the Home fleet, the Atlantic (particularly the dangerous convoys to northern Russia) and the Mediterranean. This is how weak the British Empire was.

The Japanese raid was an attempt to defeat part of this fleet before it could assemble, and simultaneously to affect public opinion, particularly pro-independence agitation in India (which was hosting the Stafford Cripps Mission to discuss postwar settlement). Frankly the Japanese had only one chance to solve the problem of a two-ocean war. The Americans were temporarily in chaos, with their remaining battleships withdrawn to the US west coast, and only three aircraft carriers available to mount minor raids in the Pacific. The situation would not last, and the Japanese needed to break British naval power before American pressures would prevent them from responding to British counter attacks.

There is a suprising agreement amongst many historians, that the British Eastern Fleet was very lucky not to meet the Japanese raiders. The general consensus, is that the superior air power of the five aircraft carrier and four battlecruiser Japanese fleet would give it an immeasurable advantage over the British, who only had two modern aircraft carriers (the third little anti-submarine carrier Hermes hardly counting), and five slower battleships. There is particular concern about the four old Revenge class battleships, which were slow and had a relatively light anti-aircraft armament. Again, this is possibly an oversimplification of the source material.

The Japanese, and Americans, at this stage in the war needed to launch large numbers of aircraft to even find their targets, let alone to get successful attacks. Anybody who studies the Coral Sea or Midway battles, cannot help but be struck by how many aircraft on both sides got lost, attacked the wrong target, or ran out of fuel and crashed. On several occasions, Japanese and American fleets patrolled within a few hundred miles of each other, but failed to connect. By contrast, the British had three years of combat experience with radar, and radar equipped aircraft. The Albacore torpedo bombers on their carriers - which were still biplane models - were strong sturdy reliable aircraft, but not ones suitable to use against enemy fighter opposition in daytime. But they were perfect night strike aircraft, particularly when directed by radar. (Their Swordfish predecessors had achieved spectacular results when only a couple of dozen of them attacked the main Italian fleet base at Taranto night and during wartime. Contrast this with the relatively unsophisticated total effects achieved by a much larger numbers of Japanese planes operating at Pearl Harbor in the day time, when attacking a nation still at peace! The Japs may have sunk twice as many battleships, but the British took out the vital oil tanks and the seaplane base as well.)

Admiral Somerville, whose command of the Ark Royal and other carriers in Force H for the preceding two years made him by far the most experienced fast carrier task force commander at this stage of the war, planned to manoeuvre his fleet to strike the Japanese at night, and to be out of range during the day. His successful experiences using his radar equipped forces in the narrow Mediterranean made him fairly confident that this tactic could be used even more successfully in the vast spaces of the Indian Ocean. Excellent intelligence - as at Midway – meant that his incomplete fleet was waiting in ambush for the Japanese on April 1, 1942. Unfortunately, after a few days manoeuvring, they returned to base, assuming their intelligence had been incorrect. The Japanese arrived on April 5.

The two fleets manoeuvred over the next several days, both trying to achieve their preferred advantage. Neither got within range. Again, the implication by many historians is that even if Somerville had managed a night airstrike that damaged or destroyed some Japanese ships, he would then have been within range for a Japanese airstrike the next day. This assumes of course that Japanese damage control would be considerably better than at Midway. Or that the Japanese would be able to direct their attacks more efficiently than at Coral Sea or Midway. That they would be more efficient at taking on a concentrated fleet’s massed anti-aircraft firepower, than the Luftwaffe was in the Mediterranean. It assumes that the limited numbers of British fighters available would not have been able to be just as effective at breaking up attacks as they had been in the Mediterranean. (Note that the British carriers were using Sea Hurricane and Martlett – the US called them Wildcat - fighters, instead of the appalling Buffalo fighters that had been used at Pearl Harbour and Singapore and would still be used in numbers at Midway.) It assumes that the British practice of radar vectoring fighters out of the sun to attack from the best possible angle would be no more efficient than the American and Japanese approach of attacking the head on. (In 1945 off Japan the British would still need far smaller numbers of combat air patrol to achieve the same results as the Americans.) It assumed that the heavily armoured British carriers that survived every hit by both Luftwaffe and Kamikaze during the entire war, would sink as easily as Japanese or American carriers did in the Pacific. For some writers, it is even suggested that be lightly armoured Japanese Kongo class battle cruisers would have an advantage in attack over the slower British battle line on the defence (though there is no recorded example anywhere at anytime of a battlecruiser surviving a stand-up fight against a battleship).

In effect, it is assumed that everything the far more experienced and battle hardened British had done right in the Mediterranean previously would go wrong here, and everything that went wrong for the still learning Japanese in the Pacific over the next two years would go right here. Dubious.

The raid was a tactical success, and a strategic failure. Much like the battle of Jutland, the attackers went home crowing about how much damage they have done, but failed in their main operational goal. In both cases the British lost more ships, but in both cases they failed to suffer the strategic losses that the attackers needed to achieve to allow themselves a future freedom of action. The British lost two cruisers, and the ancient anti-submarine aircraft carrier Hermes (which did not even have any aircraft on board). The Japanese lost more of their aircraft and skilled pilots - a steadily wasting resource - then they cared to admit. The British fleet retired to await the rest of its reinforcements. (The faster aircraft carrier squadron to Bombay, and the slower defensive battleship squadron to the east coast of Africa, where it could cover the vital Middle East and Indian transport routes.) The Japanese fleet rushed back to try and maintain some momentum in the Pacific. Within months the cumulative effects of tiredness and steady attrition amongst their pilots and carriers would contribute to significant losses at Coral Sea and Midway. No major Japanese force would ever again attempt to push into the Indian Ocean.

The collapse of the Japanese offensive potential over these few months was vital. Their early successes against peace-time fleets, or small squadrons scattered around vast areas, were not repeated when they finally started to come up against larger or better prepared Allied forces. The Indian Ocean raid got good headlines, but failed its strategic goals. They may have claimed Coral Sea as a tactical victory, but the ongoing wastage of planes and pilots and ships at Ceylon and Coral Sea left them greatly weakened at Midway. They had rampaged for four months on a shoestring, and even the raids on the Ceylon ports themselves saw them taking significantly greater casualties, for significantly less effect, that had been achieved in the early months of the war. (RAF counter-attacks at Ceylon were the first time Japanese sailors saw bombs falling towards their carriers. None hit, but it was a sign of things to come.)

None of these exercises demonstrate British weakness. The British Eastern Fleet was quickly diverted to the amphibious invasion of Madagascar to secure lines of communication, and soon after that large elements were sent back to the Mediterranean to knock Italy out of the war. There would be no great need for a large fleet in the Indian Ocean until the time came for major offensives in 1945. Churchill had guaranteed to come to Australia’s defence if it was ever seriously invaded. British troop convoys sailing around the Cape of Good Hope to the Middle East, always had contingency plans to head towards Australia if necessary. One of the armoured divisions that later served in Eighth Army, was listed for diversion to Australia until the events at Coral Sea and Midway made it clear that the threat of invasion was passed. As it turns out, despite the best efforts of the ALP and other Australian politicians, Australia was too strong for Japan to ever seriously consider invading.

The key thing that most of these historians seem to fail to recognize, is that Britain’s issue was not so much military power as shipping and transport. Britain had planes and tanks (many Canadian or American made), but lacked the ships to supply them to Russia, the Middle East and the Far East simultaneously. Britain did not need 40+ divisions at home, but lacked the troop-lift to be able to toss half a dozen to Singapore or Australia at whim. (Interestingly, the American entry to the war initially made this position far worse. Not only was Britain, for the third year running, trying to prop up a blitzkrieged ally - France, then Russia, then the United States - but the incapacity of the U.S. Navy to provide any convoy protection on its east coast almost lost the allies the Battle of the Atlantic. Even after the British hastily deployed 60 escort vessels to cover the US coast, shipping losses climbed to a level that undermined British ability to feed themselves, keep the Russians in the war, keep the reinforcements flowing to the Middle East and Asia, and pander to a panicked Australian government.)

For most of 1942 the British Empire and Commonwealth held the line, kept back the combined efforts of Germany and Italy and Japan (with fairly minimal imput from the United States compared to her potential power), and kept the Atlantic and Indian oceans open and suppliers flowing to the vital armies in the Middle East and Asia, and to the Soviets. No other empire in the history of the world has been capable of such a sustained multi-continent and multi-ocean operation. (There were financial costs to all this that I will discuss in another post.) Given that the British and Commonwealth taxpayers spent most of the interwar period trying to avoid just such an obligation, and greatly weakened their militaries in the process, this situation is less reflective of weakness than of the vast untapped inherent strength of the organization.

It would be nice if some historians could let their political preconceptions about how they think the world should work at least be susceptible to analyzing the actual evidence.

About Me

A professional historian and educator challenges some assumptions.
(A sometimes tongue-in-cheek polemic, with a Socratic emphasis on challenging people to argue back. Please do so... I make some of it outrageous largely to encourage a debate).